From Beyond (1986)
Directed by Stuart Gordon
The Resonator, a powerful machine that can control the sixth sense, has killed its creator and sent his associate into an insane asylum. When a psychiatrist becomes determined to continue the experiment, she unwittingly opens the door to a hostile parallel universe.
6 connections found
View:
6 connections, in both directions
What critics compared From Beyond to
Other than director Stuart Gordon, who delivered Lovecraft adaptations Re-Animator and From Beyond, filmmakers have failed to capture the essence of the author's work, with Stanley pulling off the seemingly impossible task of turning a story about colors emanating from a meteorite that fall outside conventional description into a cohesive and riveting experience.
Stanley realizes this effect via some digital imagery, but mostly goes the practical route, crafting strange creatures inspired in equal parts by John Carpenter’s The Thing and Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond , another Lovecraft adaptation that finds ways to depict the author’s sense of unspeakable cosmic horror using movie tools.
It’s often said that Lovecraft is among the most difficult of authors to adapt for a visual medium — hell, half his schtick is telling his readers that a specific monster is simply too horrific to describe — but, much like Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond), Stanley and co-writer Scarlett Amaris have anticipated this problem from the beginning, and the more surreal material is balanced nicely with the essentials required for a traditional horror film.
Once you’ve seen Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator , From Beyond , and Dagon , and a couple other stragglers, you’re at a bit of a loss for decently budgeted, faithful takes on the cosmic horror pioneer.
Color Out of Space, director Richard Stanley's first narrative feature in almost 25 years, is the best Lovecraft adaptation since From Beyond in 1986.
Later, when the colorful force starts taking a toll on human and animal bodies, Stanley switches into high gear, giving us ickiness on a level commensurate with one of the all-time great Lovecraft adaptations, Stuart Gordon's From Beyond .
Anyone can make a bad horror comedy, but Gunn, the screenwriter of the vastly underrated remake of George A. Romero’s seminal gutbuster-cum-social critique Dawn of the Dead, is not only an honest and heartfelt fan of horror films but also one heck of a writer: Gag all you need to while taking in this smart, ghastly, and often disarmingly hilarious homage to everything from Romero’s herky-jerky undead to Stuart Gordon’s moister moments in Re-Animator and From Beyond (not to mention Brian Yuzna’s adroit skewering of Republican family values in the little-seen 1989 nightmare-cum-satire Society), but by the time the final credits roll, damned if you’re not downright upbeat about the whole alien invasion situation on screen.
She brings a nice horror heritage to the movie, having starred in "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond."
And, as mother Aubrey, it is a treat to see Barbara Crampton (best-known for her work with Stuart Gordon in 1984's "Re-Animator" and 1986's "From Beyond") onscreen again, her shattering portrayal of motherly anguish at the sight of what she cares for the most falling apart a lingering force even after she's exited the scene.
Barbara Crampton (star of two of my genre favorites, Re-Animator and From Beyond) gives You're Next much-needed gravity in the early scenes, as the family realizes what's happening.
Genre fans will remember her fondly as the victim of all sorts of devilish debauchery in "The Re-Animator" and "From Beyond"; to see her playing a stiffly stylish society matron here is a neat treat.
…the lengths aging stars will go to retain relevance in a film that also plays as Stanley Kubrick homage (with a touch of Stuart Gordon’s "From Beyond").
Advertisement
When the film begins to show its From Beyond influence, Erickson means to capture the outright absurdity of both the 1986 film and the Lovecraft story on which it's based and use the premise for political satire, but the conclusion becomes burdened by the rigidity of Erickson's tone and restrains itself from the bizarre heights material such as this allows.
The centrepiece (not the bathtub scene, which, after Les Diaboliques and Psycho , seems less taboo than exquisitely beautiful) is a pursuit through an environment lit, uncannily, by colour cels and flashing neons that ends with our first good look at the faceless killer and, more importantly, with the silencing of the owner of the abovementioned black leather purse.
Roberta Bloch, with a bow to the author of " Psycho " (1960), who will probably not be inclined to bow back.
Pretorius (after Ernest Thesiger in Bride of Frankenstein) and Dr. Bloch (after Robert Bloch, author of Psycho).